


Neither saints nor sinners

by howbadcanmyficsbe



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - The Good Place (TV) Fusion, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Living Together, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22912540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howbadcanmyficsbe/pseuds/howbadcanmyficsbe
Summary: “Everyone in this story sucks and belongs in The Bad Place. The thief is bad, the officer chasing him is bad, all the whiny prostitutes are bad. Plus, they're all French, so they're going to The Bad Place automatically.”
Relationships: Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 31
Kudos: 105





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to Victor Hugo, whose presence cursed this Earth 218 slutty, slutty years ago. This is what he would have wanted.
> 
> This has been several months in the making and I'm finally releasing it into the wild so it doesn't split my head open anymore. HUGE thanks to Claire (@polygondust on Twitter) for brainstorming this with me and beta-reading and generally putting up with me. [ Check out this amazing art she made based on the first chapter!! Go give it your love!!](https://twitter.com/polygonndust/status/1232737050945826816?s=20)
> 
> You don't need to watch the entirety of The Good Place to get this, but I would strongly suggest having some familiarity with the first season to get the gist.
> 
> Rating and tags may change in the future.
> 
> Title from Sam Smith's "One Day At A Time."

“ _Bienvenue! Tout va bien._ ”

The instructions, if one could interpret them as such, were clear, and Javert relaxed almost involuntarily. On the side table, the letter sat with script neat and crisp. He could not quite recognize the hand, close to but not exactly resembling his superior. 

The parlor in which he found himself was not over decorated, but spoke to a tasteful host; the settee he sat on was comfortable, but firm enough to encourage conversation among guests. At this thought, Javert dimly realized that the room was empty apart from himself. It did not trouble him. 

A door he had not been aware of opened. Not suddenly, for Javert found himself expecting it; he knew not why, but this triviality did not trouble him either. At the door stood a man of average build dressed in a fine suit, a white beard framing a stern, yet easy smile. 

“Javert? Come in.”

Obeying without question, Javert rose as the man walked to a writing desk, gesturing to a chair that faced the opposite. As he waited for his host to sit, the man extended a hand as if to shake his own. He recoiled slightly at the offer, but took it when the man did not rescind. 

“Welcome, Javert. My name is Victor,” he said, smoothing his coat before seating himself. 

Javert trailed stiffly, taking a moment to look around at the study. The walls were immaculate, lined with books, and the sun spilled into the room through two large, curtained windows at their side. Something uneasy roused in his chest when he registered that his greatcoat, hat, and cane were missing. He felt suddenly naked, stripped only to shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, lacking a way to hide his chin, his eyes. Most oddly, he felt somewhat damp, though the room was not particularly hot. Yet, he felt almost chilled.

Swallowing more thickly than he should like, Javert spoke. “An honor, Monsieur.” Giving another furtive glance around the study, he turned again to Victor. “May I—that is—may I ask where I am at present?”

“Yes,” Victor said. “That is precisely why I have brought you here.”

Javert’s head began to ache as he tried to sift through the fog in his mind. He could not seem to remember the morning, could not recall how he came to be in this place. It was not the typical dull pain he encountered when thinking; it was as if he were reaching blindly through water, slowed by the resistance. 

Victor clasped his hands on the desk. “Javert, you are dead,” he said plainly. 

“Ah,” Javert said. He wished to produce any other sound, to speak, but his mind was blank. 

“This,” Victor gestured around them, “is the next plane of existence.”

“And I am in-“ Javert caught himself, unsure. What was it he meant to say? An inkling of some sickness in his throat silenced him. 

“I must clarify,” Victor said. “It is not quite what you were likely told, heaven and hell, that is. There is what we call The Good Place and, well,” he cast his eyes downward, “The Bad Place. Though I can assure you, your place is earned here in The Good Place.”

Staring at him dumbly, Javert was mute. Death was simple enough to accept; he felt he had been waiting for most of his life for the thing to be over with. At the same time, his mind tried and failed to process two very, in his own view, unlikely facts, the first of which was the existence of an afterlife. 

He was never a man who lived by the laws of the church, but he had certainly taken those beliefs as given. It was all part of the hierarchy he spent his life defending. Whether he knew those beliefs as truth in his heart was another matter. The only truth he had ever required was the law, seeing justice served. What came after was irrelevant, more divine punishment not meant for his lowly contemplations. So he accepted this too, after a moment of doubt. There was, he could discern, an inevitable feeling associated with this reality, as if he had already surrendered to that higher, unknowable power. He attempted to shake away the swirling sensation in his mind. 

Second was his apparent assignment between those two eternal antipodes. Something in his chest gave him pause at the notion. Heaven—surely he was not suited to that place. Again! Traitorous doubt crept into his mind. But why? He gave another attempt at searching his memory before settling on a gap more disturbing than his arrival. 

“I see,” Javert finally replied, trying to keep his voice level. “If I may ask, and forgive me Monsieur for my memory fails me, how is it that I perished?”

Victor gave a knowing look and a nod. “Yes, we often erase the memories to allow for a more peaceful transition. Most frequently with upsetting or violent deaths.”

“Of course,” Javert said. His voice felt hollow. “Quite understandable.”

“In any case, you have done your duty well. More than enough to earn your keep,” Victor said with a reassuring smile. 

“Of course, Monsieur,” he repeated. Like a dog endlessly barking, he thought humorlessly. 

Racing, muddled thoughts still clouded at the edge of his mind, and he pushed them to its furthest corners with disdain. How or why he found himself dead was of no concern. He was in paradise, for God’s sake; there should be not one concern in all the world for him. His likely savage death at the hands of some criminal or insurgent would be forgotten for the better. The thought was not a comfort.

“Well,” Victor said, standing from his desk. “You will have more questions to be sure, but I should like to show you around the neighborhood before the welcome celebration begins.”

“Please,” Javert said, following suit. There was not a trace of expression on his face to betray the turmoil stirring restlessly at the very back of his mind. To be so overtaken by thought was quite unlike himself; the very idea troubled him, shaking his foundation imperceptibly. As he walked, his legs felt steady but his mind faltered, perturbed and wavering. 

* * *

“Welcome all, to your first day in the afterlife!” Victor said with a flourish. 

All actions taken on Earth, he explained, amounted to a positive, or negative, effect on how each man was placed after his death. Every cup of coffee, every conversation, every misplaced button, every single little decision was factored into a point total. Those who so luckily found themselves in The Good Place were the top of it all, the kings among men in the way they lived their lives. 

Victor talked on, explaining more of the neighborhood and its other residents, but Javert could not bring himself to absorb it. He stared blankly, unable even to balk at the idea that his soulmate sat in the crowd around him. 

“ _Bienvenue au bonheur éternel_.”

The welcoming presentation should have been, to say the least, enlightening, but the clarification of this afterlife did nothing to quell the unease Javert felt in the core of his bones, the clinging static in the back of his skull. So driven to distraction was he that he ignored both the other residents around him and what should have been an alarming forewarning of the events to come. 

Raising little more than small questions and humming affirmatives, he soon allowed Victor to lead him through the cobbled streets of the neighborhood. Mercifully, a coat was returned to him, shielding the indecency of his arms and his plain waistcoat. Victor told him of his design of the neighborhood, its every detail planned at his instruction, but Javert found it ever difficult to focus. Distantly, he registered passing fine restaurants, a wine shop, a tailor, as Victor explained the infinite things residents could request at each.

“Jeanette is like a machine that will grant you whatever you wish. Simply call for her.” At the mention, a woman appeared and walked beside them. Javert startled at the sight. 

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Javert,” Jeanette said with a smile. She disappeared as quickly as she arrived, leaving only a tone in her wake. 

“While she cannot quite give you _anything,_ ” Victor said, “she can act much like a library. Any knowledge you like.”

Javert nodded numbly. It was simply another oddity among a more distressing beast that loomed over him, shadow long and overwhelmingly dark. 

The stroll continued unbidden until they reached a more secluded edge of the town where a large mansion sat, oversized and gaudy. Its walls were covered with crawling greenery, and its architecture spoke to wealth one could only describe as obscene in its brazen display. Javert had once protected many estates like this, but had never once entered. That was a life inaccessible to a spy from the gutter of all people. 

“And this,” Victor said with a wave of his hand, “is your new home. Each person’s accommodations are personalized to suit his tastes and needs.”

Javert looked up, keeping any emotion packed tightly away where even he could not access its truth. “I see,” he replied. 

“Your soulmate has already arrived,” Victor said with a warm smile. “Please come, and I shall make introductions.”

Soulmates, Javert thought. What a foreign idea, quite out of place in the life of a police spy. Never before in all his years had Javert considered that he might share his life with another; his stature too base, his desire nonexistent. If any other had suggested he were meant for such things he would have certainly laughed in their face. However, this was no mere man delivering this order unto him. While Victor was not God, he was a messenger of that higher power—in other words, Javert’s superior. Who was he to question? He would accept his lost memory, his placement in heaven, his assigned partner for eternity, for that was what was asked of him, and Javert was ever adept at obeying. 

Victor strode steadily through the long path leading to the estate’s front door, breezing easily past the enormous, imposing foyer and the adjoining rooms until they stepped out onto a patio and through an impressive set of glass doors. On the other side was a garden unlike which Javert had ever seen. The thing was overrun and untamed, spanning a great distance and containing a wide breadth of vegetation, trees, and flowers. He knew nothing of the care of such things, but could discern the deplorable shape it was in, contrasting the immaculate mansion they had just walked through. 

At its center was a small pavilion, sheltering a table and chairs. A pot of tea sat waiting as a figure sat still, turned away from the approaching guests. Javert eminently found himself swallowing a powerful urge to bolt away, but pressed on at the edge of Victor’s heels, feeling heat build uncomfortably underneath his collar. His reclaimed clothing suddenly felt constricting, a heavy burden weighing down his every step. Victor stopped, bowing slightly to the man with Javert trailing behind. 

“Good afternoon again, Monsieur. Javert, allow me to acquaint you with your soulmate, Jean Valjean.”

And it was indeed Jean Valjean that turned to Javert. His stark white hair was unmistakable, but his build was nearly a shadow of what Javert remembered it to be. Valjean’s frame was thin, his face unusually gaunt, as if he had aged twenty years from when Javert had last encountered him. Frustratingly, his mind was, at now of all times, clearing at its edges, revealing more details of that last day, the remnants of his addled thoughts striking again with vengeance. 

“I do believe you are already very much acquainted, but we all must grin and bear the formalities,” Victor said lightly. “Now,” he clapped his hands, “I must be going to attend to other residents, but please let me extend again my warmest of welcomes.”

And with that, the architect disappeared back into the house, leaving Javert to stand stupidly, alone. 

During that time, several thoughts took the opportunity to assault Javert’s person. First and foremost, overwhelming any other truth that had come to light, was the resurfacing memory that so plagued his mind since his arrival in this confounding place. He had—without any misgiving—freed this man. This criminal, this recidivist, this scoundrel whose soul by all rights belonged to the whims of law. Yet he, irreproachable as Javert was, had done him a service by bringing him and that boy into that fiacre, leaving him unbound at his home. It was indeed the last memory he could recount, walking into the night, lowering himself to that vile gutter in uttering that falsehood—he would not, could not wait for Jean Valjean, that holy villain who spared him. 

Javert swallowed dryly. 

In the shade of the gazebo Valjean sat, hands clasped around a teacup. Javert dared not enter past its edge, wavering at the steps, wringing his hat in his hands. Valjean’s expression gave Javert the distinct impression of that of an animal staring down the barrel of a gun, eyes wide with unmoving terror. Javert felt the odd echo of the deferential reports made to a mayor; he thought to a pair of desperate, wide eyes carrying a body from the sewers, confronted by a malevolent spirit. It was not lost on Javert that the eyes that bore into him now looked upon a man closer to ghost than human; perhaps he was always so.

He then turned his attention to the second thought threatening to break his sanity. Soulmates. Surely it was a mistake—Victor had taken him to the incorrect residence, Valjean was not meant to be here, there had been some sort of error. No—for there were assuredly no flaws in divine law, God’s will. For of course, Javert thought. All the times the two had met, had crossed paths in the most implausible of circumstances. This was no miscalculation. His stomach turned. Was it possible to fall ill in heaven? Was it-

“Javert.”

The sound of speech was so foreign, Javert startled, initially confused as to where it had come from. Valjean’s voice was quiet, and his tone held an indescribable emotion. It was not quite phrased as a question, but was too hesitant to be a statement. Fear? Resignation? It was beyond what Javert could comprehend, for the man was beyond comprehension. 

Without warning, Javert felt the burn of Valjean’s stare, which was quickly shifting from terror-filled shock to guarded bewilderment. At what, he was unsure. Could it have been his place in heaven, the revelation of his soulmate? Was Valjean even aware that Javert had died? He felt as if he were prey in an open field, frozen with indecision. Unbidden, his mouth opened. 

“So you too are here,” he said. 

What an inane observation. Yet they were; they were both there and they were both dead and they were bonded for eternity by some whim of the cosmos. And of course Valjean was here, terrible angel that he was.

Javert now found it possible to be ill even in paradise as he swallowed the bile building at the back of his throat. It did not escape Javert’s notice that he addressed him still with a deferential _vous._ Anything else would grate on his tongue, coax the sickness up from his stomach. 

Slowly, Valjean opened his mouth and closed it again, as if thinking better of what he meant to say. The anxious expression had not left him, yet he could not seem to tear his open eyes away from Javert. It was Javert who broke the locked gaze between them, desperate to hide his surely wretched face in the depths of his collar. 

“I suppose I shall find my rooms easily enough,” Javert said in a clipped, unfeeling tone.

Before Valjean could protest or even react, Javert was walking hurriedly into the mansion as if expecting, dreading a deadly pursuit. He knew, of course, that nothing of the sort could follow him, dead as he was. But the weight of Valjean’s stare was assuredly worse, gripping his soul far tighter than any reaper. Death, as he always knew it, should put a legal end to any chase, but those human laws had no dominion here. This was Valjean’s territory, a world where the deplorable were revered, and convicts became saints. It was in this backwards cage that Javert found himself, another kind of mortal peril closing in on his bare throat. 


	2. Chapter 2

As Valjean awoke, he could still feel the sleep clinging to his eyelids like an anchor, threatening to drag them down to the depths of an inescapable sea. Sleep had not found him that night, nor any other in his first week in The Good Place. He lay rigidly on the bed beneath him, swallowed in pillows far too plush and sheets far too silken. Though he instinctively knew he needed no rest in this place, its elusive nature left him exhausted, his mind unable to quiet itself. All there was to do was stare worriedly at the ornate ceiling above him and anguish over every thought that slipped like a snake into his mind. Sleep was impossible like this, for when he closed his eyes, all he saw was Javert’s face, a timid but looming apparition transfigured to reality. 

It had been many months since Valjean had last given thought to his old pursuer, the last man who knew his true name. At the time, he had not considered it deeply; the papers had called it a fit of madness, the insanity of an old spy past his due. He accepted it as fact, for the alternative was a danger to the fate of his soul, for a man disturbed was not held responsible for his actions in such a state. Valjean now doubted as much.

That day Javert walked into the garden, he seemed disturbed, but only in the most rational sense. The man was hardly what Valjean might call mad. If anything, Javert seemed fearful, and the sight of his expression was something that sent waves of sickness through Valjean’s stomach. 

He turned to the window beside him, listening to the distant sound of birds and buzzing insects, a hallmark of the perpetual spring outside. 

Upon thinking in that week, Valjean had concluded he may have been the last person to see Inspector Javert alive. Surely the man had been overtaken in a burst of hysterics, there was no other way such an uncompromising hunter would willingly release his kill, no circumstance in which the wolf would retract his buried teeth from his prize. 

Yet Valjean remained free until the end of his days, and Javert threw himself into the Seine. These facts were contradictory to everything he knew of Javert. Irreproachable as he was, Javert had let him go and damned himself in the process. It was an unthinkable course of thought, but Valjean kept arriving at its alarming end. Was this Valjean’s doing? Could he have done something to keep Javert from losing himself to those dark waters? Did Javert blame him as much as Valjean was beginning to blame himself?

These were the thoughts that darted about his head through those sleepless, isolated nights. Though, it was much the same in the daytime. He saw almost nothing of Javert; the policeman who had trailed him so closely for years now avoided him like a plague. They skirted around one another in a mockery of a dance, unsure of who was predator and who was prey. 

Valjean, for his part, chose not to pursue Javert, but did nothing to hide from him. The entire matter left him hesitant; if they were truly soulmates, surely the Lord meant for them to come together? Regardless, each time Javert caught sight of him, a panic would rise on his face and move tensely through his body, sending Javert to run off to wherever it was he chose to spend his time. The mansion they shared was large enough that an encounter was often unlikely, but made any confrontation an unwelcome surprise each time. 

It would be falsehood to claim that every glimpse of Javert did not send old adrenaline through his veins, urging him to escape. The feeling was that of a phantom limb, insisting its existence even in clear absence. There was no escape there, no place to escape from. There were only two men, stripped of any title and placed together in a void. No police, no convicts, no courthouse, no jail; only two dead souls wrapped in the thorned vines of a long, abhorrent history.

They had not spoken a word to the other in that week. 

With a drawn sigh, Valjean rose from the bed, resigned to attempt sleeping any further. Sunlight was spilling in through the bedchamber curtains, as it had every day. The weather was perfect here, providing all the sunny days and calm rains that Valjean desired. It occurred to him that he could ask for anything, call upon Jeanette and name almost any wish and have it fulfilled, if only his heart could name a single want. The situation was agony, reaching paradise and finding it frustratingly difficult to enjoy. 

He dressed himself and frowned at the garden outside his windows. Shaking his head, Valjean made his way down the winding stairs of the foyer. His footsteps echoed across the room and he winced, trying to quiet himself. Walking about the lavish house left him with an acute sense of anxiety. The space was too open, its furnishings too oversized, its decor too extravagant. 

Like a caged animal suddenly freed, Valjean felt overwhelmed by the enormity of the world, of freedom, so much so that his first instinct was to retreat back to that cell, to the life he knew well. At the very least, he could understand it, remove any complication of this thing between he and Javert. To be hunted was something he had no difficulty comprehending. He knew how to evade, to weave and duck and fly at a moment’s notice. He even knew of surrender. But to be a soulmate? Valjean was at a loss. 

At the end of the stairway, Valjean heard a sudden knock at the door. He strode across the foyer, too long of a distance, and opened it to find Victor. 

“Ah,” Valjean said. “How are you, Monsieur?” He gestured to allow the man inside. Briefly looking at the timepiece tucked away in his immaculate suit, he stepped in with a smile. 

“Very well,” Victor said. “And how are you finding everything? Is it to your liking?”

“Absolutely,” Valjean lied. “Though the garden presents quite the challenge, I think I shall be able to tame it with time.”

Victor clasped a firm hand on his shoulder in encouragement. “That’s the spirit, good man. Now,” he said, “I have a request of you.”

“Of course,” Valjean said, mask of a smile spreading across his face.

“I should like to have a little soiree for the neighborhood, have everyone together.”

“A lovely idea,” Valjean said. 

“Would you consider hosting the affair? I would never suppose to intrude, but I do think the residents would enjoy the estate.”

“Well,” Valjean started, “I may need to... to speak with Javert.” 

He silently hoped the terror in his voice was not evident. 

“But of course,” Victor said in understanding tones. “And how is the man? I had meant to leave the two of you alone for a spell; though, you have all the time in the world.”

“Yes, well,” Valjean said, faltering. “It is... a difficult transition for us both, I think.”

“As to be expected,” Victor replied. “Do know you may confide in me should you have any troubles. And the rest of us shall look forward to the celebration tomorrow evening?”

“Oh yes,” Valjean said, suddenly agreeing with ease, disregarding the objections Javert was sure to have and the protests of his own screaming mind. “I should find no trouble handling it myself.”

Victor gave a smile and nodded, already making his way out the door again. “It’s settled then. And do have fun with it!”

As Valjean closed the door behind him, he doubted the possibility immensely.

* * *

He opted not to inform Javert of the three hundred people about to arrive at their shared home. How could he? Javert was wont to disappear more often than not, and Valjean never had the reason, desire, or bravery to seek him out. No, he would simply plan the affair himself rather than confront the ghost lurking about the mansion grounds. That tall, dark figure, he thought, would not take kindly to Valjean asking anything of him. This was, of course, an assumption with no evidence, for Javert had not said a mere word to him since his arrival. 

“Jeanette,” Valjean said, scribbling a note to hand to the awaiting woman. “See to it that Javert receives this.” 

It was an act of cowardice, to inform his soulmate by proxy. It was less painful than the alternative. 

And so, he ran about for those two days, calling Jeanette and attempting to throw together what he could qualify as a civilized party. As he made taxing choices between hor d'oeuvres and what wine to serve, he told himself over and over again: this was the Lord’s plan. He would need to endure it, grin and bear the hardship in service of something higher than himself. 

Valjean had never been tasked with such things in his life, never living in that level of society that would throw functions. As it was, Valjean, by all accounts, hated parties. Not simply organizing them, but attending them was another effort in and of itself. Crowds panicked him, conversation drained him, and loud noises stirred in him unpleasant memories better kept to his nightmares. 

Now he stood at the edge of an enormous crowd, fretting to be sure all guests were attended to. The dull roar of the crowd eclipsed all else, nearly drowning the ability to think clearly in the safety of one’s mind. For the occasion, he wore a fine suit, though his collar rubbed uncomfortably at his neck, too stiff for his own good. Wearing such a thing, it felt almost like disguising himself as a true gentleman once more, playing the part. As this thought struck him, Valjean looked across the room to see Javert. 

He stood at the far wall of the second floor’s sitting room, arms crossed; a flute of champagne was pushed into his empty hand by an approaching gaggle of partygoers, pulling an unwilling participant into lively conversation. Everything in his posture spoke to stiff discomfort; his brow was deep set, frown pronounced, attempting to bury his chin into his high collar. However, his eyes were plain to see without his hat, and they soon shifted to meet Valjean’s. 

It was an old, but all too familiar feeling. Javert was studying him with the intensity of the old inspector, searching the convict’s body, seizing his wrists with his eyes alone. There was no reason to feel anxious, for that pure dread to pump through his blood like a drug. The threat of arrest was all but extinguished, yet the notion still gripped Valjean’s chest, refusing to relent just as much as Javert’s icy stare. 

Glancing to his side, Valjean took the opportunity to grab hold of a glass, downing the champagne in one hurried gulp. Something in Javert’s expression shifted to utter confusion as Valjean walked off, hoping to find fresh air on the balcony. Before he could reach the nighttime breeze, a hand on his shoulder was guiding him towards Javert, Victor’s laughing voice suddenly introducing him to a number of names he would forget in moments. 

“…And this is Jean Valjean,” Victor said. “A simply wonderful man, and our most generous host tonight!”

Valjean attempted to keep his dreadful thoughts from poisoning his expression. He plastered a smile to his face, greeting the two couples with demure affability. Stoic as a marble statue, Javert was silent next to him. With the tight crowd around them humming with merriment, their shoulders were forced to touch, and their elbows bumped with each tiny movement. It reminded him vividly of a dark night, a near-corpse, a carriage. Out of the corner of his eye, Valjean could see Javert’s knuckles were white, gripping the flute in his hand. 

“So pleased to make your acquaintance, Monsieur.” It was one of the women who spoke. “We were just speaking with Inspector Javert here of your exploits.”

The man on her arm nodded. “We have heard many a good thing about you, Monsieur.”

“Oh?” Valjean said, suddenly grateful for the alcohol beginning to dull the edges of his senses. It was a temptation to pull the glass from Javert’s hand, but the chance vanished as Javert drank half of it, his expression somehow even more dismal. Valjean was sure that he seemed neutral to any other observer, but he could feel the indignation, the uneasiness radiating from his person. 

“Indeed,” Victor said. “I was regaling them before with the tales of your tenure as mayor.”

“It was so many years ago. Surely there are more interesting things to discuss,” Valjean said. There was something almost easy about slipping back into the smooth deflections of Monsieur Madeleine, uncomfortable as he was to dredge up the mask. “Far greater men have accomplished much more than I.”

“Nonsense!” another man said. “I heard you turned single-handedly saved every soul in that town from poverty.”

“He rescued half the town from a fire!”

“Not to mention pulling the cart from that poor man.”

As the group around them continued to discuss the grossly exaggerated feats of the former mayor, Valjean glanced again to Javert. Something akin to fury, but closer to pained agony was rising in his temperament, but only in the context of this unshakable man was this evident. Rarely, if ever, did Javert betray any emotion outwardly. But in that moment, Valjean could clearly see the strain and slight tremor of his hand as he inhaled the remainder of his drink, grimacing at the taste. And, most importantly, Valjean noticed his cravat was ever so slightly askew.

If there was anything Valjean learned of Javert as an officer in Montreuil-sur-Mer, it was that he took great pride in his appearance. This was not to say he was an attractive man—far from it. Javert was, as most policemen were, perpetually a bachelor, evaded by women and reviled by fellow men. Yet for not so much as a living wage, Javert faithfully performed his duty to a fault. For reasons Valjean could not know, Javert was just as faultless in keeping himself in perfect order, not a hair out of place. Perhaps, as a man with little resource, he took great care in the few clothes he possessed; perhaps he wished to maintain any dignity one can when living in the destitution that was serving as a member of the police force. Proof that he could rise above his lowly, hated status.

So to see that glaring mistake in the order of his collar was a shock to Valjean’s muddled mind, snapping him back into some semblance of reality. 

“...and all this despite being treated so poorly at the hands of society,” a woman said sympathetically. “Tell us, what was it that made you choose such a righteous path?”

“Ah, well,” Valjean said. “You speak too highly of me, Madame. I simply was offered kindness and tried to do what one could to pay it back to God.”

“What a blessing now that you may rest from it all,” another said. “A life on the run is no way to live, surely.”

“A wonder that the authorities would see a saint such as you chained again!”

Beside him, Valjean could sense Javert further tensing, and worried for a moment that Javert might shatter the flute in his ever tightening grip. 

Javert suddenly gestured mechanically with the empty glass. “Well! Shall I fetch more drinks?” he said through clenched teeth. And, before Valjean could say a word, he disappeared into the throng of guests. 

Again, Valjean’s mind was assaulted with the image of a bloated body being dredged from the river Seine. He imagined Javert that night, standing alone on a bridge in the dead of night, disappearing instead into the rapid waters; he felt his stomach drop. 

Valjean stared at the glass of wine in front of him, its surface quivering. Odd, for he had not moved. Furrowing his brow, he startled as he felt tremors running through the ground beneath them and up through his bones. Couples held onto one another in both shock and trepidation as glasses fell from trays, tchotchkes toppled from tables, and the walls creaked with strain. As the quakes began to still, he could hear shouts and a hum of concern in the room and turned to Victor. There was a bewildered look of apprehension on his face as he held onto a nearby chair for balance. 

“Is everyone alright?” Valjean asked, looking around the room before approaching Victor. “What was that?”

Victor loosened his cravat slightly, a nervous tick. “I… I am not sure. There must be something interfering with the neighborhood’s harmony.”

“What do you mean?” Valjean said, attempting to keep panic from his tone. 

“Everything in the neighborhood has been designed to create a perfect balance,” Victor said, straightening. “Should something send it off kilter, it might respond in turn.” 

He turned to the rest of the room, raising his hands. “Everything is alright, good people. Please, go on with the festivities!” Taking Valjean aside, he lowered his voice. “I shall go with Jeanette to see to the anomaly. Look after the guests for me, if you would. Tell them nothing is amiss for the time being.”

“Of course,” Valjean said as Victor walked off through the crowd, leaving him alone in a sea of restlessly chattering, now slightly distressed, partygoers. Javert was nowhere to be found, drinks all but forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the lovely reception on the first chapter!! I won't be on a regular update schedule for this because of my final semester of school, so thanks in advance for your patience (and any encouraging comments, which are much appreciated).


	3. Chapter 3

Birds chirped and sunlight broke through the morning clouds, uncaring of the melancholy overtaking Javert’s mind. He faintly wondered if the birds were the souls of deceased animals, or if they, too, were a simulation of the neighborhood, artificially framing a picturesque imitation of life. Even more faintly, Javert pondered if birds even possessed souls, doubtful as he was for the existence of his own. 

A river, approximately half the width of the Seine, ran lazily through the town. Residents often took small rowboats together, letting its steady current pull them along to its whim. Javert stood, hands clasped behind his back, on one of the many bridges that allowed passage over the waterway, staring at the stream. 

Since his arrival in The Good Place, Javert had not slept. His attempt at rest the first night was fruitless, and he soon abandoned the endeavor entirely in favor of pacing about the mansion and aimlessly roaming the streets at night. Javert had never quite felt the comfort of a suitable bed; his formative years sleeping on cold floors and guard barracks left him accustomed to hard surfaces. His overly soft chambers were jarring by comparison. And so, when he found that he did not necessarily require sleep in the afterlife, he discarded it as a superfluous utility. In any case, he had no right to pursue it, as much as sleep evaded him. He could no longer bear the chase in any sense of the word. 

It was sunrise now, following another sleepless facade of a night. Javert was in what one could only describe as complete and utter turmoil. Javert was both unaccustomed to and averse to thinking, an activity he could now not escape by any means. In the afterlife, there were no more criminals to pursue, no law to uphold, no duty to fill his day before falling into black, dreamless sleep. Now, Javert’s time was occupied with nothing but thought, shifting drastically between long, sluggish stretches of ennui and rapid, panicked images that flashed through his mind like firecrackers, inadvertently setting off another with each explosion. 

Even now the image refused to vacate his mind. Valjean’s—the mayor’s—smile was seemingly adhered to the inside of his eyes. The way that mask so easily took over his expression, how simply he was able to slip back into that persona was alarming, maddening. As if the men were, in fact, one and the same, two sides of a coin readily flipped. 

Before he could contemplate it further, another tremor went through the ground, light but unmistakably present. Since the night of the party, the earthquakes had not ceased, only growing in frequency and violence with the days. Javert held onto the edge of the bridge and suddenly noticed the water seemed high, its current faster than was usual. 

“How terrible!”

Javert’s observations were interrupted as he turned to the voice. Nearby, a woman held onto the arm of a gentleman as the quakes subsided. He dimly recognized the couple from the mansion soiree: a Madame Edith and Monsieur Renard. By necessity, Javert was one to remember names and faces, and it seemed this skill had saved him, distracted as he was at the time. He recalled Edith as an Englishwoman in life and Renard as a Spaniard, though language ceased to matter in that place. Though Javert could hear any speech in French, Edith had excitedly explained to him she was speaking English whilst The Good Place translated without either party lifting a finger. At the time, he sourly wished he could not understand her, if only to tune out her incessant talking. 

“Monsieur,” Renard said. “Out early today, I see.”

“Yes,” Javert said neutrally. He tucked his cane under his arm, ducking slightly under the protection of his hat. “I am partial to the early morning air.”

“Though surely not to these tremors,” Edith said. “They frighten me so. I do hope Victor might find the issue soon.”

“Indeed,” Renard said with more interest than worry. “Evidently some aberration in the neighborhood is the cause. Lord knows what it is. Or who.”

“A troubling notion,” Javert agreed with a curt nod. He turned back to the river, hoping the two might catch his meaning and leave him be. They did not leave. 

“But still, what a lovely sunrise! Renard and I are both early risers, you see. One of the many ways we were destined for one another, you know.” She gave her partner’s arm a tight squeeze. 

Renard replied with a quick kiss on her cheek before turning again to Javert. The lovestruck look on the man’s face was liable to make him ill. “It truly is a blessing that we have found each other. Never too late, eh?” When Javert failed to reply, something dawned on his face. “Monsieur, you should join us for breakfast! I had only wished for more time to speak with you at the festivities.”

Javert floundered, attempting in vain to think of any hurried excuse to decline. There was no place he had to be but his own house and, at the moment, he would rather be caught dead than risk returning in daylight. Inwardly, he grimaced at his own turn of phrase. 

“I suppose,” he said warily. Anything to keep from seeing Valjean’s gaunt face staring blankly at his garden, damned unreadable expression vexing him. Tucking his cane underneath his arm, he did all within his power to push the image from his mind. Much better to focus on the trembling ground beneath his boots than the earthquakes disturbing his thoughts. 

* * *

“…and because of that, I was able to carry out an entirely chaste life,” Edith said. “I would not trade it for anything, but I certainly am happy to relinquish it here with Renard.” For, by Javert’s count, the fourth time during the meal, the two clasped hands on the table across from him. He only found solace in that it prevented Edith from continuing to speak.

“Monsieur Valjean surely feels the same,” Renard said, gesturing to Javert. “From what we’ve heard, the man sorely needed the respite.”

At the mention of Valjean, Javert’s knuckles went white gripping the fork in his hand. “Oh?” he said. “Pray tell, what have you heard?”

“Victor speaks so highly of him, as you know,” Edith said. “They way he revitalized that town and helped so many. But what strikes me is taking that poor child in!”

“Child,” Javert said under his breath. At Edith’s confusion, he clarified. “Forgive me, Madame. He speaks little of his past. Even I am not privy to his most personal matters.” It was not entirely a lie, though Javert certainly obfuscated any truth in saying such a thing.

“Yes, the woman’s child,” Renard said. “Plucked her out of a terrible, terrible home and raised her as his own. If not for that, the thing may have taken to the streets.”

Quite like her mother, Javert thought faintly. A memory of Javert’s own mother stirred, of looking for work as a lad delivering messages for the guards in exchange for a pittance. He promptly shoved it aside and replaced it with a similarly upsetting image of a dying woman and a suddenly white-haired mayor. Valjean had indeed taken it upon himself to collect the child and care for the girl himself. But surely a convict, he thought, could never provide a life for a delicate young thing. 

“How lucky they were to find refuge in that convent! And what a lovely young woman she became, married well and content. You would expect no less from being brought up with a loving father and an order of nuns, no?”

Edith began to prattle on yet again about nuns for a time as Javert sat, overcome. He was desperate with the need to find any fault in this man, any trace of the hatred and thieving ways of Jean le cric; there were none to be found. This was even disregarding what Victor had not shared. His unending generosity as Madeleine, his rescue of the man on the  _ Orion,  _ his trek through the sewers to deliver that boy’s corpse. Javert’s own unlikely escape from the barricade. The couple spoke of Valjean like the most holy of martyrs to a degree that might have been regarded as blasphemous in certain company. Javert could have wept knowing that he could not argue the assertion.

“But what I truly wanted to discuss was you, Monsieur l’inspector,” Renard said with a grin. “Victor has only told us the most brief of details on your life.”

“There is little to tell,” Javert said. “What interest might anyone have in the life of an old police spy?”

“Surely you have much to speak of!” Edith said. “I can only imagine the kinds of criminals you must have apprehended after—after how many years?”

“Twelve as an inspector, Madame,” he replied stiffly, sipping at his coffee. 

“Astounding,” Renard said. “And what sorts of crimes would you typically investigate?”

“I should hope nothing so dreadful as murder,” Edith said worriedly. “I shudder to even think of such things.”

“Not nearly as much as one might think,” Javert assured her. “My time at post in Paris was indeed filled with gangs and the like, but they are few and far between. Most crimes are of the petty variety, but crimes nonetheless. Public drunkenness or disturbance. Theft.” He said this with the confidence of a veteran officer, but could feel the slight tremble of his hand. He gripped tighter on the cup of coffee, hoping the heat would still the tremor. 

“Still,” Renard said, “it must have been difficult to make such decisions of arrest.”

“It was hardly my duty to judge citizens,” Javert said dryly. “That is the decision of the courts.”

“But surely it is not always so clear cut?” Renard said. “Take the case of Monsieur Valjean. Was his situation not of consequence? I am told his family was starving, poor things.”

“Theft is a crime, Monsieur. The law cannot make exceptions lest our society condone  _ all  _ theft.”

“Would it be any more right to let the family starve though?” Edith said sadly. “I grew up in much the same condition. My father had such a time working after the local factory went under. He went to work in the mines, you see, and passed away, dangerous as that work is. We could scarcely provide for ourselves, my siblings and I. The church was the only place for me to go.”

Renard held her hand in a soothing gesture, rubbing circles into her palm with his thumb. The allure of illness was never more palpable for Javert. Any protest, any account of his own escape from the gutter stopped at his lips, held steadfast by the tears welling in Edith’s eyes. 

“I would have understood it, had my brothers stolen food for us. But they worked and worked, and never quite made enough to support all of us. Work was hard to come by, and my mother refused to send them to the mines, you see. That was why I went to the convent first.”

Still petting at her hand, Renard spoke. “What a difficult thing, to climb out of the depths of poverty. Nearly impossible for an honest man.”

Javert considered this quietly as memories yet again assaulted him. From birth, Javert was poor. His mother, frequently in and out of jail, had little to provide for him. That was what he knew as a boy, lawless chaos and the stringent, unchanging stability of the law. Disorder had come to mean hunger; structure, on the other hand, held some promise of safety. Delivering letters meant money. Money meant food, if only temporarily. Obeying guards and officers meant respect. Respect meant opportunity. Opportunity was a way to claw at the chance of living, of escaping the cycle of arrest and poverty and detainment yet again. 

What sort of escape was it though? All his life, Javert lived at the edge of ruin. His few clothes were threadbare, his meals infrequent, his rent tightly saved for. Had he not died as he did, Javert would have no pension, no family to care for him after his body refused work any longer. Yet, there was no choice in it, for life as a criminal would surely lead to ruin. He thought of his father in the galleys. There was no choice to be found. 

This was the root of what infuriated a younger Javert about Monsieur Madeleine—rather, Jean Valjean. The man had a  _ choice.  _ While he may have gone hungry on occasion, he still chose again and again to turn to crime, a temptation that had never crossed Javert’s entirely averse mind. And yet, his reward for theft and breaking parole was to start fresh, to amass a fortune, to become a respected mayor of a thriving town. It was not so much that Javert desired any of these things. He had no goals in life beyond his status as an irreproachable arbiter of human law, standing between those two classes of men. No, what tortured Javert was that this man had no respect for those boundaries, that he could cross them as he saw fit. As if the boundaries were not there at all. That he, a gentleman, would treat Javert with the esteem of an equal. The very thought shook his foundation. 

He wet his lips before speaking. “Yes,” Javert said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “Though honest men are hard to come by.”

“Well if any man is honest, ‘tis you, my friend,” Renard said, raising his cup of tea before bringing it to his lips. “Never told a lie, Victor said as much.”

“Indeed,” Javert said. 

There was something terrible transpiring in Javert. Edith and Renard spent the remainder of the morning chattering over other matters, politely overlooking the earthquakes seeming to rattle the table every ten minutes. As he bowed, taking his leave and returning his hat to his head, he walked again to one of the river’s many bridges, this particular one at the furthest edge of the village. The water’s current seemed even stronger than ever. Had it rained? Instinctively, he held onto the ledge as another tremor passed through. Distantly, he could hear the sounds of concerned residents. 

Javert’s thoughts could have drowned him in that moment were he not presently deceased. Images of Jean le cric, Monsieur Madeleine, Fauchelevent, moved in a flurry behind his eyes, threatening to split his head into three ravaged segments without hope of repair. Three men, all in the same, for he had seen the mayor’s smile mask an old philanthropist’s calm expression and had seen it change just as quickly to the animal fear of a prisoner before the lash. It was a sick, unwavering confirmation. There was no fairness in life, no divisions between them, no foothold for Javert to hold so desperately to. Men could change, and Javert had been mistaken. 

The tremors stopped. Javert looked to his left and noticed there a wine shop, unassumingly nestled between the tightly packed buildings. He then suddenly recalled that moment, in more pained detail, at the party. He thought of Valjean’s easy, false smile, how its sting had lessened under the effect of drink. 

Looking around him for any witness and finding none, he walked assuredly to the bar, even as the Earth trembled beneath his every step. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured school would slow down my writing process but this ended up taking a while because of a pandemic! Interesting turn of events, huh. 
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments are appreciated as always 💕


	4. Chapter 4

Valjean was not one to garden with gloves. Since his youth, he preferred and was often required to go without. Over the years, his hands had become calloused and tough, scarred by rough trees and hard labor. At that point, hurting himself hardly crossed his mind when bending down over the soil or trimming a hedge. This garden was different. 

The sprawling thing behind the mansion was even more overgrown than Rue Plumet, and far more vast. However, what truly distinguished it was not its size, but its rate of growth. In the relatively short time Valjean had lived there, the vines and weeds had sprouted uncontrollably, threatening to overtake the plants in desperate need of care. Every day, Valjean made more attempts at curbing their assault, but the next day they would return twofold.

He stooped on his hands and knees near the garden’s pond then, attempting to clear out the foliage and vines backing up the pathway meant for a waterfall to flow. For hours he worked at it, plunging his arms into ever-advancing vines that seemed to have minds of their own, hell-bent on preventing any progress made. 

It was early in the morning, the sun rising through the clouds to heat his skin. The sun was not overly hot, still mild in its slow rise upward. Still, Valjean wiped sweat from his brow as he crouched; the aches and pains of a living body had left him in the afterlife, but many sensations stayed. The weak state he left the Earth in still clung to him, and the lack of sleep hardly did him favors. 

A tremor went through the ground, but Valjean hardly found himself surprised. They came in waves, increasing each day, advancing with the thorny vines. It would soon pass, only to come back with the same insistence later. He gave an effort to ignore the disturbance.

At that moment, the ground gave way to such a violent earthquake that Valjean fell forward, arms caught in a tangle of vines. He winced at the sharp pain of thorns on his right palm, more tearing at his shirtsleeve as he splayed his arms for purchase. The quake subsided as quickly as it came, and Valjean was left pulling a bleeding hand out of the vines as he stood. Inspecting the wounds and his torn sleeve, he sighed. 

“Jeanette,” he said. 

“Yes?” Jeanette said, appearing beside him. 

“Could I bother you for another shirt and some... bandages?” Valjean said. As he looked back at his hand, the cuts had disappeared, covered once again by thick, calloused skin. Only a trace of dried blood remained on the untarnished surface. 

“A new shirt is in your chambers,” Jeanette said cheerily. “Do not worry over any injuries, they will take care of themselves.”

“Thank you,” Valjean said, absentmindedly marveling at his hand. 

He glared almost ruefully at the unwieldy plants before turning back to Jeanette, still cradling his hand. She smiled placidly. 

“Anything else, Monsieur?”

Valjean paused in thought, the weeds reminding him of another matter. “Have you any idea where Javert is? I’ve not seen him for... I am not even sure how long.”

“He is in the town,” Jeanette answered without hesitation. “In the wine shop.”

“The  _ wine  _ shop?” Valjean balked, looking at the sky. It was not even midday. 

“Correct,” Jeanette said just as happily. 

“...Thank you, Jeanette. That will be all.” With that, she disappeared with a ringing tone. 

Valjean gave another furtive glance at the thorns before making his way towards the house to change his shirt and find a coat, leaving the vines to creep along further still.

* * *

The wine shop was at the furthest edge of town from their home, slightly isolated from the other storefronts. Valjean walked purposefully through the streets, giving halted greetings and forced smiles to passers by as his worry grew. There was something in him hoping to see Javert on his walk there, a wish that Jeanette was incorrect. The man was nowhere to be found, and his blood pounded as he approached the shop. 

It was a small establishment, meant to host small, intimate affairs. Thus far, Valjean had been forced to attend two wine tastings, showcasing a resident’s attempt at making wine themselves. Javert did not accompany him, for he had not seen him in weeks, not since the start of the earthquakes. There was no shortage on those occasions of troubled questions and commentary.  _ “Oh but wherever is your soulmate?” “How sad to see you here without your love!”  _ There were inevitable whispers that the two were perhaps having a lover’s spat. Perhaps it was close enough to the truth, he thought queasily. With trepidation, he opened the door and stepped into blackness.

A lone figure sat at the bar, back turned to the door. Valjean stepped in, closing it behind him, and wound through the vacant tables and chairs littering the space. Morning light filtered into the gaps in the curtains and provided only an outline of the man in the otherwise darkened room. A greatcoat was splayed across the counter, a hat discarded on the floor. His greying hair spilled like tangled roots beneath an old, gnarled tree, barely contained by the ribbon that threatened to become unwound at any moment. It was far more than an errant cravat. Javert was entirely undone. 

“What are you doing here, Javert?”

The turn towards Valjean was slow, ambling, as Javert took in the sight. He gaped at Valjean for several seconds before slapping his knee and laughing hoarsely, teeth and gums bared in some semblance of a wicked smile. Aside from the horror of that expression, his face was unshaven, his eyes sunken with exhaustion. Nevertheless, he shook with laughter, nearly falling off his stool and spilling the remainder of his drink in his other hand. Valjean grimaced as Javert struggled to calm himself enough to speak. 

“Same as you, I presume,” he said. Each word came out of his mouth with great effort, spilling into the empty room and trailing off in uncoordinated slurs. When Valjean took too long to respond, Javert filled the silence, cutting any stagnant tension between them. 

“Now, what sorrows have you to drown in paradise, hm?” Javert gestured to the seat beside him. “Come, sit! Though I cannot promise I won’t bite.” He descended into another fit of ugly laughter. 

“I did not come here for drink,” Valjean said dryly. He warily took the proffered chair. “I came looking for you. You’ve not been at the house for a good few weeks. Have you even slept?”

“Jeanette!” Javert slurred. She appeared immediately behind the bar, giving Valjean a start. “Give this saint a glass, and another for myself if you would.” He gave Valjean another start as he patted at his shoulder roughly. 

“Of course,” Jeanette replied cheerily. Two glasses appeared on the counter, filling generously with wine from some invisible source. 

“I think you’ve had more than enough,” Valjean protested, reaching for Javert’s drink. With a sense of dread, he realized he was unsure how long Javert had been there. Had it been but a night? Several days? A week? He gave him a hard look as Javert attempted and failed to swat his hand away. “Javert, I did not come here to watch you drink yourself to death.”

Narrowing his eyes, Javert looked at him quizzically. “To death?” he repeated. “Have you forgotten so easily where we find ourselves?” A dry, humorless chuckle escaped him. “To death, he says.” He took the opportunity to seize the glass from Valjean’s hand with surprising force and, before Valjean could hope to stop him, downed the wine in a single breath.

“Jeanette?” Javert said. “A… another.”

“Don’t,” Valjean said, turning to the barkeep.

“You cannot stop her,” Javert said. “For we- we are much the same, Jeanette and I. We once were. I was once. She is quite the well-oiled machine, following orders to a fault, I tell you. If I ask for another glass she will do so. Why? Because I have asked it. Correct, Jeanette?”

“That is correct,” she said as another glass appeared on the counter. Valjean immediately slid it out of Javert’s range with his own drink. Javert was so incapacitated he seemed to scarcely notice. 

“You are not a machine, Javert. No more than I,” Valjean said cautiously. 

“How right you are!” Javert cried. “For a machine is not plagued by thoughts, it need- it need only obey and look! Look here at me.” He opened his arms and gestured around him. “Drinking with a reci- a reciv- a convict who I willingly freed. But no, not simply any convict, mind you. A man who I pursued to the very point of persecution for twenty odd years. And I freed him, for he is even more angelic than I was led to believe after sparing my very life.” He spat out the last word as if it were filth on his tongue. “I took the law in my hands and threw it away like scrap. How presumptuous of me! How haughty to think  _ I _ knew any better. What machine would ever attempt such a thing?”

Javert laughed then, another terrible, biting sound that rang in Valjean’s ears. Suddenly, his voice grew quiet, quiet enough that Valjean had to strain to hear him. “No, no. I am but a dog. Once an obedient hound to be sure. But now I have gone senile, rabid perhaps. A broken piece of machinery if there ever was one.” 

Turning his gaze, he reached out for Valjean. At first, Valjean feared Javert meant to seize him, but he only began to fiddle with the fabric of his coat, as if solving a great puzzle. He focused intently on his cravat and the white collar peeking from beneath as he spoke. Valjean dared not move, but he could smell Javert’s breath, the stench of misery and wine that clung to him. 

“Always loyal,” Javert muttered. “To a fault, eh? You should have… should have dismissed me when I asked. But that was simply Monsieur le maire. Forgiving as a saint. There could be nothing further from le cric. That man could never dream to forgive a soul. Surely you know why it was so difficult to recognize you. No one could. Not one man in that court.”

“You did,” Valjean said. He dimly thought that perhaps Javert was pointedly staring at the scars circling his neck, hidden underneath his cravat. 

“And yet you would forgive me! Forgive me for accusing you, for chasing you, for capturing you again and again. Little wonder that I went mad. You damn saint.” As he spoke, Javert began to slide forward; Valjean quickly took hold of his shoulders, propping him upright again onto the bar stool. “Perhaps you are a machine, yourself,” he slurred, “spitting out forgiveness like your damned factory spat out beads. Is that it, then?”

“Javert,” Valjean said. “Being forgiving is hardly as simple as you suggest.”

“Ha! Yes, for I once told you kindness was easy. You remember well. And again, you attempt to correct me, but let me enlighten you, Monsieur. I should hardly call it a kindness, setting you free. But, I will tell you how simple it was. I lied to you, smoothly as a criminal, and walked away. Yes! How easy it all is. I will tell you where the hardship lies though. It is in living with that decision, Jean Valjean.”

At that, Valjean recoiled as if struck. Overcome as he was with the image of Javert falling into dark waters, being crushed by the current, he felt something rising in him. It was an indignation that had simmered low, but now threatened to boil over. 

“What do you know of my hardship?” As Valjean said it, he found himself surprised to hear the words coming from his own mouth, but they felt overdue. He attempted to focus himself, breathing deeply. “Do you think it was so easy to let you walk away at the barricade? Those men thought me a murderer, Javert. Or, if I had been caught releasing you?”

“Lot of good it did me,” Javert spat. “Some other traitor finished the job for you, I can only assume.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Who knows,” Javert slurred, waving at Jeanette for another drink. “I can’t remember a damn thing after I left Rue de l’Homme Arme. That was the last thing I did, and what a state I was in. ’Tis no wonder some man took advantage.” He remarked on his own death casually, in the manner one might refer to the weather.

Any anger suddenly drained from Valjean only to be replaced by a wave of terror. In his state, he ignored the glass Javert was already draining in his hand. He hunched over the bar, glass slipping from his grip before it went sailing with a crash on the other side of the counter. He failed to react. 

“You didn’t ask Victor?” Valjean said, wresting the tremble from his voice. “Did you ask him how you… how you…” 

A silence hung between them before Javert roused slightly. 

“...upsetting,” Javert mumbled. 

“What?” Valjean leaned in as Javert began to slump onto the bar. 

Javert’s only answer was a slew of incoherent words muttered under his breath. Valjean, slightly panicked, took hold of the back of his collar and wrenched him to eye level. Like grabbing an animal by the nape of its neck. 

“Javert,” he said, carefully enunciating each word. “You don’t know what you did after you left?”

“...upsetting or violent deaths,” Javert tried again, more loudly. His eyes were clenched shut, as if Valjean’s voice pained him. “They erase them. Was- was prob’ly some undesirable... some...” he trailed off as Valjean released him and let him fall forward again onto the wooden counter.

He did not remember. Valjean was sure of it now, that Javert had fallen by his own will, forced himself outside the world of the living in a fit of something he could not quite comprehend. Javert had decided to free him and walked away only to promptly drown himself. In that moment, watching Javert sink lower with his head between his arms, he considered the terrible choice before him. Would it be kinder to tell Javert then? To tell him he had most certainly drowned himself? Instead, his mind went back to what Javert had said earlier and selfishly pushed away any thought of revealing what he knew. Valjean leaned down onto the counter to face Javert, close as he could without touching him. 

“Javert,” he said. The man responded in some hum of affirmation. “Why did you leave? You spoke of being in a state. State of what sort?”

The sound of Javert’s laugh was a harsh thing, the rough bark of an old guard dog. “You should know more than anyone. You freed me. Gave me your address.” Javert turned to him and grabbed Valjean by his cravat, sinking his fingers into the fabric. “I should be asking  _ you _ why.”

Valjean swallowed, feeling Javert’s knuckles on his neck.

“Did you intend to come back?”

“No.”

“You felt you owed me a debt?” 

“No.”

“Then what? Why not arrest me?”

“I  _ could  _ not!” Javert roared, slamming his free hand onto the counter. The reverberation echoed across the room as something in Javert’s expression shifted from rage to a miserable despondency. Slowly, almost gently, Javert unhanded Valjean and turned away again, retreating into the cover of his arms on the bar. He looked wretched. 

“To carry out the law, there is no thought,” Javert said. “Kindness is another… another matter. I had never thought to supersede society with my own foolish, traitorous thoughts. Never before had I even had them! You vile man, you drove me to thought. And I understood that it was all wrong. All of it.”

“All… of what?” Valjean asked. He felt a dread building at the pit of his stomach, a dawning realization of why Javert had destroyed himself so thoroughly, what he had truly driven him to; he could not stop the creeping guilt running up his spine like a viper ready to strike.

“My conduct. My life,” Javert nearly moaned. “It was not right by God. Good Lord, I would have sent a saint to his death. I would have relished it.” Valjean grimaced at the implication, but Javert went on, voice muffled as he buried his head further into his arms. It was small, but Valjean could swear he heard a sob escape his lips. He tugged at his whiskers, ran his hands through his hair haphazardly, sending more loose strands across his face. “A blessing for me to be killed so that I might not- not. Well.” Javert rubbed at his temples. “Jeanette! Another.”

Valjean did nothing to stop another glass from coming into Javert’s hand. This time, however, he began to sip at it slowly, contemplating and regarding Valjean with a wariness and a hint of shame in his eyes. The look overwhelmed Valjean with a sense of pity, made stranger by the uninhibited way Javert’s eyes raked across him. 

Never before had he heard Javert say such things. From experience, he knew Javert to only talk in one of two manners: blunt and mechanical or a relentless rant that would continue until his point had been heard. This was certainly the latter, but this was no logical argument of facts, of law. This was a deluge of emotions Valjean was unaware the man even possessed; he was terrified of what it meant, of what Javert might do. He reminded himself there was nothing to be done, for Javert had already gone through with the most unthinkable deed possible. 

“You drink to dull the thoughts, then?” Valjean asked. 

“What else am I to do?” Javert said. “Were I living, I should like to hand in a resig… resignation. Accept punishment.” He suddenly bolted upright and spread his arms to gesture around them, glass sloshing wine onto the floor. “But I am here!” he shouted, not at Valjean, perhaps at God. “There is no punishment here! Only endless benevolence and talk of how God-damned pious each and every man here is! Maddening! How- how is any man to obtain penance here! All that’s left are my insipid thoughts and  _ you.  _ I should not be here, you see? I have not done one act that should please the Lord, but I am trapped here. And yet again, I challenge my superior. To say that I should not be here is a sinful thought, no? To say God was wrong in sending me here? Little wonder there are earthquakes all about—they are surely my doing! And another thing!” He paused for a moment to drink as Valjean watched in silent horror. “I have been forced here with you, a man whom I have tortured, only to continue so after his death. Every moment I exist here I serve to ruin your paradise.  _ Deserved  _ paradise, I might add.  _ Damn, _ ” he said, finishing off the glass and returning it to the counter with a sharp clang. “Damn,” he said again, more quietly. Regretfully.

The silence between them stretched, filled only by the small sounds of Javert’s fidgeting with his glass across the wood. He was turned away from Valjean, looking deeply into the empty cup as if it might provide him an answer, a way out, would make Valjean disappear should he stare hard enough. The lines of age on his face seemed more vividly etched, the darkness under his eyes blacker than a starless night. When had his hair become so grey? Valjean wondered. Distantly, he acknowledged that he himself looked no better. 

“You truly believe you did no good in life?” Valjean ventured. 

“Only if it coincided with the law,” Javert said. “Hardly acts of good will.”

“What of that night? You took the boy home, even though he was at the barricade.”

“A corpse,” Javert said. 

“He lived,” Valjean corrected. “If it matters to you.”

“It does not.”

“Your payment for the carriage seat, then.”

“Simply a payment of debt.”

“You released me,” Valjean said. 

“That is another matter,” Javert said through clenched teeth, daring Valjean to bring it up again. “And lot of good it did, you sit here as dead as I.”

Valjean sighed deeply and steeled himself for the subject he was loath to approach. “Do you remember the letter then?” Valjean asked. 

At that, Javert let silence hang between them for a moment. “Letter,” Javert repeated, squinting at the glass in concentration. “I wrote… wrote a letter that night.”

“Yes,” Valjean said slowly. “It was in the papers. Made quite a stir.”

“I wrote to the prefect…” Javert slurred, putting his head in his hands. “About the prisons?”

“You complained of the conditions,” Valjean said. “That seems a good thing to me.”

Javert was silent again, furrowing his brow in thought, attempting to reach a memory his addled mind could not bring forth. 

“Javert,” Valjean urged again. “We have nothing but time here. Why not make the most of it?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“If you think yourself so base, become a better man. Surely that is preferable to wallowing here,” he said pointedly. 

As if some great truth had stunned him, Javert turned to him with wide eyes. It was not surprise that filled them, but fear. Animalistic fear filled his expression, like he was liable to bolt out of the wine shop at any moment. The wild state of his hair and clothes completed the picture well enough. 

“…I do not know how,” he whispered miserably. 

Valjean was slightly torn. It would certainly be the Christian thing to do, to lift Javert from whatever despair he was sinking into, and it was perhaps his responsibility as the eminent cause of Javert’s fall. Moreover, it was perhaps his obligation, the duty of a soulmate, to take Javert in his arms in some show of love. The thought only served to petrify him, thinking of the urge to bolt and hide each time he remembered who Javert was, each time his eyes caught his. Yet, what choice was there? Nowhere to run, nowhere to be imprisoned. In a way, he and Javert were both trapped, dogs in adjacent cages, chained by the same force. 

Steadily, so as not to startle him, Valjean slid the glass out from Javert’s hand. Their fingers brushed momentarily and Javert winced, but did not take his eyes away from Valjean. 

“Let us start with sleep. And water,” Valjean said. 

“Yes, water.” Javert began to slump yet again. “A lov- lovely idea,” he said dreamily. 

Ignoring the turn of his stomach at the thought of Javert’s water-logged body, Valjean stood. “Come,” he said. “Can you stand?”

Javert gave a nod and quickly rose from the stool, only to instantly fall into Valjean’s arms in a drunken stumble. Valjean exhaled and propped Javert to his side, preparing for the inevitable long walk back to their vast, empty home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay, I haven't had the energy to do anything but poke at this since quarantine started (and I'm trying to graduate but, you know). I hope this can brighten someone's day, and I hope all of you are staying safe and sane right now.


	5. Chapter 5

Though he thought it impossible, Javert felt more exhausted than ever, pushing past any limits of tiredness he knew. The reality was incorrigible, for he knew he had slept; he had opened his eyes lying in a bed. However, his eyes felt sunken, his body sore, as he stared at the gilded ceiling above him, blinking blearily.

There was no earthly way Javert could approximate how many drinks he had. It was perhaps easier to measure it in days rather than the precise number of glasses, but even that truth eluded him. Time operated differently in The Good Place, and alcohol saw to it that Javert knew not day from night locked away in the darkness of the wine shop. 

It was most assuredly daytime now. Sunlight splayed through the curtains to his left, and he could hear the sounds of morning birds. Again, he wondered if their souls too were saved against their very will. Grasping onto any resolve possible, Javert pressed a hand to his head and sat up, groaning all the way. He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed, as he breathed, praying that alcohol would not have the same consequences in heaven. Javert had never been a drinking man, finding the pastime or even occasional habit frivolous, unsightly, especially so for a man of his status. In truth, he could only recall drinking perhaps a handful of times in all his years to a point he could define as drunkenness.

Sighing, he lowered his hand, confident that he would not be ill, only to look at Valjean, perched anxiously in a chair across the room. The urge to vomit immediately rose at the sight. Valjean stood, gesturing with alarm to something beside him. His hands found the purchase of an empty chamber pot, and he waited for the bile to rise with a sting from his throat. 

Javert retched dryly until he found himself vomiting; the sensation was strange, he thought, but he ignored it, focusing on bringing up what his body had rejected. He could feel sweat begin to break at the effort as he breathed heavily into the pot. Finding a moment of respite, he opened his eyes to look at what appeared to be nothing but water before him. Blankly, Javert stared at what should have been sickness, confusion buzzing at the edge of his mind, remembering something distant, dark, cold. 

A hand on his shoulder sent a wave of apprehension through Javert’s core; he jumped at the contact, breathing in sharply as his head snapped up to look at Valjean. The force of it startled Valjean in turn, and he took his hand away immediately. Before Javert could think to shout at him, he turned as more water came up in retching coughs, burning his throat with the strain. It seemed endless, water coming from seemingly nowhere. There was no more of Valjean’s hand, but he could sense it hovering beside him at the ready. Javert stopped for a moment, taking heavy, shaking breaths. 

“...the hell is all this _water_ coming from?” Javert croaked, running a hand through his sweat-laden tangle of hair. He had no strength to look up, but could hear Valjean shifting next to him in what he could only interpret as discomfort. Let him, he thought bitterly. It was Valjean’s inadvisable decision to wrench him from the bar in the first place. He stole a glance at his face to take in the wide-eyed horror that seemed to be taking over his expression. Perhaps Valjean, pious as he was, had never seen the full effects of a drunken night. But no, Javert thought, remembering where Valjean had come from. Surely he had seen his share of men drown themselves willingly. 

After another series of coughs, Javert’s stomach seemed emptied. He set down the pot, which Valjean took and placed gingerly on the floor. Javert collapsed on the pillows behind him and imagined the sight he must have looked. In the moment, he found it difficult to care. 

“Well,” Javert said, “are you pleased to have pulled me from the bottle now?”

“Are the effects the same here? Does your head ache?” Valjean deftly sidestepped the jeer. It was within all Javert’s instincts to thrash then, to put up a fight with any hint of kindness, to shout at Valjean until he cowered, perhaps to throw something at the man. Javert had not the energy to perform any of these simple tasks, and settled for a rueful glower. 

“No,” Javert answered.

“And the illness?”

“Passed.”

“And will you go back?”

“To the shop?” After a pause, Valjean waited for an answer; Javert gave a non-committal grunt, unable to look Valjean in the eye. 

“Javert,” Valjean said. It was not an admonishment, and held almost a plea, forcing his gaze back to Valjean’s face. “Will you go back?”

Javert startled then, but not outwardly so, at Valjean’s expression. There was a mixture of things that betrayed his even tone. The slight downturn of the edges of his mouth. The concerned furrow of his brow. The begging wetness of his eyes. This was something else. It looked not like the anger of Jean le cric, nor the quiet contemplation of Père Madeleine, nor even the calm acceptance of Fauchelevent. Another thing entirely stirred in his expression, in the way he stood. Javert was unsettled. 

“No,” Javert decided then. “No,” he said again, as if telling himself the first time and reiterating the sentiment to Valjean in the second. 

Valjean’s shoulders sagged somewhat, as if letting a heavy load fall off his back. “Rest then,” he said. “You had not slept for very long.”

Javert said nothing, moved not any distance, and followed Valjean with his eyes in the manner of a practiced spy. His eyelids began to feel heavy, weighed with the exertion of wrenching water from his throat. The last thing he recalled before closing them was the dragging limp of Valjean’s leg as he made his way across the room. He was struck with the image as he began to drift. It was as if the chain still held him, rattling along the floor, while Javert was now attached to the other end.

* * *

The bedchamber was empty when he woke again. It was closer to midday then, the sun high and blindingly bright, though the curtains were mercifully closed. Groggily, Javert sat up, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. 

“Jeanette,” he said. 

The now familiar tone rang out in the room. “How may I assist you?”

“Clean clothes, if you would.” He opened his eyes, looking at the wardrobe where trousers and a shirt appeared, slung over the door. Again, he was alone in the room as Jeanette vanished, and he began to wrestle with the prospect of dressing and leaving the safety of his overly comfortable sheets. 

There was no comfort to be found in the typical lull of drunken memories. The damning image of every slurred yell, every wretched sob, every bodily assault on Valjean came starkly to mind. There was nothing he had not bared before this man, nothing left to conceal after he had spilled every errant, cursed thought from his mouth. It was if the weeks of thoughts, dripping in a slow trickle, had built up to a torrent, destroying any dam he hoped would contain it. Javert sighed. 

The allure of leaving the sunken mattress won over and he shifted, making to leave the bed. He stared into the wardrobe mirror, studying the dark circles under his eyes and the chaos of his hair. Surely the water basin and a comb would do him a bit of good, though there was nothing to be done for the eyes. 

By the time he washed himself and traded his nightshirt for a proper summer coat, Javert felt more settled. Venturing another look into the mirror he paused. He looked respectable enough, not a drunkard at the very least. His hair was tamed, slicked back into a queue. It was mystifying that he should even care what Valjean should see him like; Valjean had already seen the worst Javert had ever looked. After that spectacle, he surely held no more decorum in the man’s eyes than a common vagabond. Fiddling with his cravat, he let his hands fall to his sides and grimaced. 

“Jeanette?”

“Yes, Javert?”

“Where is Monsieur Valjean at present?”

“The dining room,” she said cheerily. 

“That will be all,” Javert said as she disappeared again. 

Javert’s expression was set, a tight line forming his frowning mouth and lines upon his brow burrowed deep-set in his skin. He walked down the staircase mechanically, feeling as though he had forgotten the act of walking altogether, overthinking every step. 

Slower than he would like, Javert had reached the door leading to the dining room on the first floor. Taking in a deep breath, he closed his hand around the intricately carved knob and entered the room. 

Javert stood limply, looking on an empty room. He floundered, turning side to side. The chairs, a luxurious wood upholstered with the finest fabric, were neatly tucked under the large table that stretched across the room. An enormous, roaring fireplace sat at the end, flanked by paintings and tapestries across the walls. There was no food; there were no guests. Most evidently, there was no Valjean. 

Stepping out, Javert closed the door quietly. Despite the time he had spent there, he still knew little of the house. Was the mansion indulgent enough to contain a second dining room, more lavish than the first? Considering Jeanette's words carefully, he made to walk to a portion of the house he had not often inspected. 

The servant’s quarters were, of course, unoccupied. But every large household was designed with that lower class in mind, to keep them hidden while still within arm’s reach. Such was the nature of the nature of status. In the case of their mansion, the bowels of the structure contained such rooms. The kitchen, along with a smaller, plain dining room sat among the bedchambers meant for maids and butlers. Javert walked steadily down those stone stairs now, hearing the strange echo of shoes on a hard surface. The halls were dimly lit, but he soon found his way to an open door where he could hear the sounds of a crackling fire. 

Again Javert stood stupidly in a doorway, this time facing Valjean’s broad back, seated at a meager table. In front of him sat a modest meal, bread and cheese with a glass of wine. Mildly, he turned, eyes widening at the sight of Javert. Any rehearsal of words, of excuses, died on Javert’s tongue as he looked at the trace of fear that quickly went across Valjean’s face. 

“You’ve woken up,” Valjean said softly. Any trepidation in his features was erased, replaced by a tremendous look of sorrow as he focused on Javert’s face, no doubt on his haggard, sunken eyes. He ignored it.

“You take meals here?” Javert said with an air of annoyance. 

Valjean’s face twisted to something uncomfortable. “The main hall is far too much for only myself.”

“Far too much for two,” Javert grumbled, crossing his arms. Silence then hung between them, thick with unease. 

“…Will you join me then?” Valjean said. Again, a look of worry had come back to his features, cast orange by the light of the fire in the dim room. 

“Why,” Javert said. It felt more a statement than a question, but Valjean nevertheless answered. 

“You have not eaten in some time, I assume.”

“Dead men need not eat,” Javert said indignantly. 

“It is still a comfort,” Valjean said. “Some normalcy, though I would not force it on you.”

Warily, Javert regarded him. Valjean was still thin, his skin pale, like a worn piece of fabric washed far too many times. Vacantly, he thought of Valjean coming up from the sewers, transparent as a ghost, nearly looking as dead as the corpse he carried. Resigned as a dead man. Now he simply fit the description further, aside from his infuriating expression that seemed to bore holes into him, sharp pin pricks around his person all at once. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Javert snapped. 

Confusion took over his countenance. “Like what?”

“As if I am a ghastly, piteous dog left to sleep in the gutter,” he said through clenched teeth. “Now please, if you would.”

Valjean looked aside, scrubbing any emotion from his face. “Of course.”

Making his way deliberately around the table, Javert sat rigidly on a wooden stool. He fixed his gaze on the meal before them, stomach churning at the idea of food. Longingly, he looked at the glass of wine, but decided against any untoward action. Silently, Valjean took a knife in hand, cutting at the loaf of bread between them. Javert was desperate to fill the space, to speak over his own riotous thoughts. 

“I would think you to rejoice with a house such as this,” Javert said. “Was it not your want?” 

A simple observation that seemed to cut Valjean deeper than intended, his wince almost imperceptible. As he recovered, he seemed to consider it carefully before replying and closed his eyes. 

“ _Feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?'_ ” He looked up then, staring Javert intently in the eye and held out the slice. 

“ _Lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God_ ,” Valjean finished. Javert took it hesitantly as Valjean gave the smallest of empty smiles. He was faintly sure that it was forced. “Proverbs.”

Javert scoffed then, looking down at the bread. “You of all men would know of such things,” he muttered. “Have you had your fill, then, of taking what should belong to the state?”

For the first time since Javert had arrived in The Good Place, Valjean’s face contorted into something resembling anger. Not quite the rebuke while Javert was drinking, but pure ire lighting behind his eyes. It died just as swiftly as it came as Valjean turned his attention to the cheese, cutting off a portion for Javert. Immediately, he longed for its return, a welcome alternative to the merciful attentions of a troubled parent soothing a crying babe. 

“I was under the impression you wished to learn kindness,” he said reproachfully. 

“I _wished_ to find punishment,” Javert growled, bitterly biting into the bread. 

Valjean sighed, exasperated. “Would it be punishment enough to accompany me to the garden then? I plan to work, and though I cannot say if your company will be appreciated, I will invite you nonetheless. I cannot keep watch over you all day.” 

“I am no child.”

“I know. Children do not drink like sailors.”

Javert glowered, attempting to threaten him with a simple stare. “It is as I have told you, I have no intent to return.”

“Excellent then, you should be able to sit quietly while I weed,” Valjean said, standing. There was no more bite to his tone, but its earlier echoes still rang in Javert’s ears; he silently marveled at the memory of the sound and stowed it away for further examination. 

* * *

The afternoon sun was high, though the heat was not hideous enough to dissuade one from venturing outdoors. Laborious gardening, though, was another matter. Valjean was bent over a thicket of weeds, attempting to untangle their growth from the inside of a patch of white lilies. Stripped down to only a waistcoat and shirtsleeves, Javert could make out the sweat spreading underneath his arms and at his neck. No doubt it spread across his back, skin hot underneath the thick fabric. 

Javert perched cradling a cup of coffee in the gazebo, disagreeable in his own right. Though he found no anguish in the heat, the mental anguish from the past had returned somewhat, muddling his mind along with the revulsive scent of flowers overrunning his senses. Without warning, his coffee began to tremble and the ground shook beneath him; he calmly watched Valjean take hold of a nearby tree until it passed. 

Valjean turned back to Javert then. “You said the earthquakes were your doing?” he said, wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. 

“It seems the most likely explanation,” Javert said evenly. “Every other man seems assured in his place here.”

Turning his attention back to the bed, Valjean gave an affirmative grunt. “So you say.”

Again Valjean let silence fill the air. Javert sipped at his drink, knowing all too well it would do nothing to curb his racing thoughts. Regardless, he drank it more fervently than necessary, needing something, anything, to occupy his hands. The notion was incongruous. Valjean should have seen no reason to seek him out, let alone offer to-

He halted his train of thought. What was it that Valjean had offered, exactly? Aside from taking Javert home and forcing him to a bed, what was it that the man intended for him? Perhaps a more apt question was what Javert intended for himself. He thought first of Valjean—rash, kindly, forgiving—and then of himself—steadfast, uncaring, unrelenting. To think he could approach such a state seemed unattainable, impossible. What would it mean to become patient? To hold compassion? It was foreign, unthinkable, and yet such a man stood in front of him, struggling with the stubborn weeds littering the flowerbed. 

“Tell me Javert,” Valjean said, still buried elbow deep in the foliage. Javert startled at the sounds, his words cutting through the stagnant air like a knife. “Even after our… our conversation, I still don’t understand why you left. You mean to punish yourself, but to what end?” 

Javert sighed heavily. “As I have told you, I could not arrest you.”

“And not because I set you free at the barricade?”

“No. To put you in chains would have been… wrong.”

“To whom?” Valjean said searchingly.

“To God,” Javert said simply.

“I see,” Valjean said, cursing softly at a thorned weed nicking his arm. “You are a man of God then?”

“Not quite.”

“Then He did not ask you to let me free?”

“A superior need not give every direct order,” Javert said. 

“So it was you who decided?”

Javert shifted in his chair uncomfortably, bringing back the aching silence as he failed to answer. To claim responsibility was to truly answer the question, and he had no answer, no solid, logical explanation of why he had so betrayed his very nature several times over that night. It terrified him. 

“Forgive my presumption, but it seemed God had little to do with it.”

“Was that not your reason?” Javert asked sharply. “To change your thieving ways for the promise of heaven? Why should it not be mine?”

“I-“ Valjean paused, as if trying to steel himself from saying something untoward. “I was shown the way by a man of the church, yes, but I was not concerned for my own fate. I needed to change for the benefit of my fellow man.” Javert could see his shoulders sag as he spoke, though he could not see his face beneath the wide brim of his sunhat. “How could I expect better of the world when I was but a wretch?”

This gave Javert pause, for it was something he understood. For in life, Javert had been nothing if not fair. Perhaps not fair in the eyes of the Lord, but certainly in that of society, authority. Javert was not cruel, nor was he unusual in his punishment of criminals. Rather, his way of judging the world was uncompromising, irreproachable. It was the same way he would treat anyone. His own family. Himself. Valjean’s words were beginning to hold the promise of oncoming nausea in the back of his throat. 

“There is a passage from Hosea,” Valjean continued. “ _There is swearing, luring, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed._ ” He looked up from his work then, sweat shining in the sunlight. “To live in hate is to give hate to others. That was no way to go on living.”

Something in Javert snapped at the sentiment, and his patience wavered. “Save your preaching,” Javert said. “To think a convict might tell me what is wrong with society.”

“Of course,” Valjean said sardonically. “You asked for torture, and I can provide. Shall I make a whole sermon of it?”

Javert glared at him, but was partly afraid that Valjean might be serious. At the same time, there was something of a thrill in getting a rise out of Valjean, the stoic man of mercy. So, as if to test his proximity to humanity, Javert countered. 

“A preacher bearing a brand,” Javert said coolly. “A novelty if there ever was one.”

Valjean’s previously placid face twisted into animosity as he stared at Javert. His lips were pressed together as if sure that a stray biting word might come out. Instead, he stood and walked across the garden to the mansion’s shed, mumbling about tools. Smugly, Javert smiled his terrible smile to himself as he watched the bed of snow-white lilies turn a fiery orange. So, it seemed the saint could find fury after all. He let himself think cheerfully on the matter, attempting to cover any lingering pangs of guilt in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I blanked out in a haze, wrote an entire valvert chef/health inspector AU, fixated on it for months, and emerged only just now remembering that this existed. I wrote this back in March? February? Time doesn't exist anymore. Hope you enjoy regardless!


	6. Chapter 6

Summoning all his willpower, Jean Valjean ignored the earthquake underneath his feet. One would think with their frequency, he should be able to ignore them, like the chime of a house clock in the night. Yet with each quake, he could feel his very soul moving with its power, leaving him inwardly shaking in its aftermath.

He sat then in the mansion’s library, hidden away in a private reading room. Its main chamber was filled—up the walls and to the ceiling—with books on any subject. One need only think of the tome of their desire and the room would provide, and was most intimidating in its vastness. This had the unfortunate effect of overwhelming Valjean and gave his mind little peace. Blessedly, a smaller alcove flanked the room’s massive fireplace, containing two comfortable chairs, a warm lamp, and a more intimate bookshelf for the reader’s selection. It was in that room that he found some semblance of solace as he poured over several books on gardening. With great reluctance he had kept the door open should Javert come looking for him, though the possibility was exceedingly unlikely.

Any conversation Valjean had attempted to spur on between them was quickly shut down. In all fairness, Valjean was always the one to walk away first, but only after Javert’s distasteful comments had grown to an unbearable point. It seemed insurmountable to set Javert on a path to any kind of resolution if the other party was entirely unwilling, not unlike telling a feral dog to sit. The feat was nonsensical, if not completely impossible. 

It was in that state of mind that he found his mouth hanging open as Javert walked into the antechamber. 

“Ah—“

“Jave—“

They interrupted one another and stopped, falling into an awkward silence. Javert stood rigidly in the doorway, frowning deeply. 

“I thought you would be in the garden,” Javert managed. 

“I, ah—“ Valjean said, looking aside at the stack of books haphazardly marked. “I thought to read for a spell on the subject.”

The truth of the matter was that Valjean was in desperate straits in regards to the devil of a garden. Even after all his efforts, the garden was, in fact, in a worse state than when he had first started his campaign. The weeds and thorned vines had only grown more resistant to his intervention, seemingly both content and purposely insisting on growing wild and bringing ruin to the neighboring plants. He hoped to find some sort of answer on how to tame these interlopers, but had no such luck with the books provided. Invasive species of the afterlife were beyond the expertise of any human book written, unsurprisingly. 

Valjean tried and failed to force a smile to his face, ending somewhere between a grimace and a polite upturn of his lips. “Did you wish to read with me?”

Javert’s frown shifted to incredulity. “No, I detest the idea.” He paused, searching Valjean’s face as his own went back to a glare. “The idea of reading, that is.”

Quietly, Valjean made note of the strange look that passed over Javert. “Was there something you needed then?”

“More of a report than anything,” Javert said, almost evasively. 

“What in the world is there to report?”

“Victor.”

“Victor?”

Javert swallowed audibly. “Victor. The man has been asking after you—myself—us, rather.” Before continuing, Javert gave a most pained scowl, as if speaking had become a monumental effort. “He is asking after our… our relationship, you see. Evidently the two of us do not appear to be a happy pair.”

“Not difficult to surmise,” Valjean said. “We never go out anywhere together.” Not to mention the assertion was more than true. Valjean did not add the fact. 

“I am inclined to simply tell him the preposterous nature of our… situation. However,” Javert looked away. “I do not intend to argue with him on such matters.”

“Nor I,” Valjean said. 

Javert and he were agreed on that point at the very least. For his part, Valjean was terrified of straying from the plan provided for him from the Lord. Who was he to question such things? Worse tests of his faith had come to him in life, though the idea that he might still be subjected to them after death left an unfortunately bitter taste in his mouth. On the other hand, Javert would suffer any judgement if it were asked of him by his mysterious new superior: God. 

“I thought to inform you of the scrutiny nevertheless,” Javert said, crossing his arms. “I haven’t the slightest idea what to do of it. I find it intolerable to lie, and I doubt Victor intends to relent. He has even suggested intervening to send us on... outings and such.”

“Allow me to think on the matter,” Valjean said, furrowing his brow. “There is surely something we can do to divert any… untoward attention.” With a curt nod, Javert turned to leave. 

“Wait,” Valjean said. “Will you stay and sit?”

Javert gave him a weary, anxious look before turning again, leaving an achingly empty space in the doorway in his stride. Not long after, another quake unforgivingly knocked a stack of books from the side table. 

* * *

Valjean found heaven to be an unbearably lonely place. For years he had only known the cold indifference of solitude, never having any more companionship than books. But years with Cosette had changed him, melted his isolated heart into something that craved affection and a kind of closeness he had not known since his childhood. The memories of love were revealed after being frozen away for so long, preserved and that much more pronounced in their tenderness. Like the sudden absence of a coat in winter, Valjean could feel his heart freezing again. 

In theory it was not so bad; he survived so many years without the comfort of love. But cold is tenfold more agonizing when one had once known warmth. 

He thought of this as he shared a walk with a neighbor. Agnes was an old woman, much older than Valjean let himself become. They had met in the same manner, each taking a solitary walk in the park near their homes. For Valjean, it was an escape from the dreaded emptiness of the house, the callousness of Javert’s stare. For Agnes, walking about gardens was a beloved pastime, offering her solace in her tumultuous marriage–of the arranged variety. 

“I was indeed lucky to enjoy such things as long as I did,” she said musingly. Valjean had her on his arm as they walked the grounds. The day, as always, was perfect. 

“Fortunately you may walk here all you like,” Valjean said. 

“Ah,” said Agnes. “But here I have none of my children to accompany me. No offense meant to you, Monsieur.”

“I would not dream of it, Madame.”

“Yes, I am certainly glad of my beloved here and of your pleasant company. But,” she paused, considering. “In my old age, I was able to walk with my grandchildren. Not very long, mind you, but enough to make the age worth its weight.”

“Grandchildren?”

“Yes, I lived to see four of them. Remarkable, to see them so young again, when your children were just so!”

“My congratulations to your family for having been so blessed,” Valjean said. There was an emptiness to his voice; he said it all with a smile that would convince her otherwise. 

She smiled with the glow of a new mother, youth returned somewhat to her face. “Blessed indeed. Blessed that I walked with them for just a short time, and blessed that I may walk here, no?”

It was a long while before Agnes stopped them in front of the river. Like the town, it too flowed through a section of these particular grounds, several cobblestone bridges arching above it. They stopped atop one, admiring the view before Valjean felt the ground tremble slightly below them. Looking aside to Agnes, she seemed perturbed. Not at the earthquake exactly, for she was staring intently at Valjean. 

“Something ails you,” she said. 

“Pardon?” Valjean asked. 

Agnes had a way of seeing through Valjean’s outward attempts at subterfuge, not unlike Javert. There were times when Agnes would calm him in an almost motherly way, and times in which her perception was sure to drive stakes of nervous thoughts through his heart. This was of the latter category as she scrutinized his expression. He hoped she could not see through to the unspeakable sadness that tore at him, the regret that was burrowing into his heart at the thought of Cosette’s children lost to him. The enormity of his remorse was crushing, weighing on him like the chains of the bagne. 

“You need not speak of it if you so desire,” Agnes said. “Though I may offer any advice or comfort needed for a friend.”

“Javert,” he lied. Of course, Javert was always at the forefront of his mind, haunting most of his thoughts even in his absence. However, speaking of the Inspector seemed far simpler than dredging up the shame stirring in his chest over precious grandchildren whom he would never meet. Tiny faces he would never know the joy of kissing. “Please, I ask for your discretion in the matter.”

“Of course, think nothing of it.”

“Well, I find it difficult to… connect with him. We have little in common, you see.”

At that, she gave a knowing smile. “Surely you are more similar than you might think, Monsieur.”

Valjean considered the suggestion for a moment. The thought did nothing to comfort him. 

“He takes little interest in the garden and outright refuses to read.”

“Can he read?”

“I do believe so.”

“Give him a book. See that you might find something that piques his interest! Show him that you care about his passions.”

Inwardly, Valjean blanched at the idea. For he knew nothing of what Javert favored in his spare time; he doubted even that Javert had any spare time to speak of in life, and therefore had little to fill it with. Even less encouraging was his clear distaste for literature. Yet, the thought sparked another notion in his mind. It was surely doomed to failure, but the possibility spoke to a light, however faint, at the end of a tunnel. 

“I appreciate your wisdom as always, Agnes.”

She gave a serene smile, suggesting they go to feed the ducks a loaf of bread. 

* * *

“What the devil are these meant to be?” 

Javert looked in horror as Valjean carried a precarious stack of books into the drawing room. More precisely, it was one of the house’s many drawing rooms. Javert had been pacing in the one nearest his rooms when Valjean found him. It was easier to find him since his return to the house, even in its labyrinthian enormity; Javert was not one to explore, preferring to keep himself restricted to simple necessities. A place to sleep, to eat, to pace until the tread of his boots was worn down to nothing.

“Research,” Valjean huffed, setting down the load on a nearby writing desk. 

“For what?”

“For you.”

Warily, Javert stepped forward and picked up the closest text. “ _ Kant _ ?” he balked, disgust clear in his tone. 

Valjean stood back and crossed his arms. “What was it you told me when you were… indisposed?”

Contorting his face into a hard stare, Javert stopped. “I rightly claimed I had no place here.”

“Hence the quakes?”

Javert let out a non-committal grunt.

“Then this,” Valjean gestured to the books, “is a way to perhaps resolve it, since you seem so determined not to speak with me in any manner of civility. That is just as well, but I do not relish seeing you brood and make no effort of it. So, study away.”

Silently, Javert watched him with an anxious look before investigating the titles. He scoured them, turning them over in his hands and setting them aside, as if looking for something. Valjean looked at him in confusion.

“Was there something you wanted in particular?”

“No bible?” he murmured. 

“No,” Valjean said. Javert seemed perplexed, as if working out a puzzle in his head as he looked at Valjean. “Purely philosophical works.”

In truth, he had long considered whether or not he should provide a copy of the holy book. Valjean had thought long and hard about what exactly he should present Javert with, taking several days in the library to debate the selections. He recalled then Javert’s particular vitriol at any mention of a bible verse and thought better of reasoning with him on a soapbox. 

“I thought to appeal to your logic rather than theology,” Valjean said. “Is that not preferable?”

Javert narrowed his eyes, his nostrils flaring. A pronounced frown was forming on his mouth, but he kept it tightly shut, exhaling through his nose. 

“Will you read them, then?”

Exasperated, Javert pinched the bridge of his nose. “Have I not made it perfectly clear that I loathe reading?”

“Perfectly so,” he said dryly.

“And?” Javert said, waving and throwing a copy of  _ The Metaphysics of Morals  _ onto the table. 

“You wanted punishment, no?” Valjean said. “Is this not a fitting one?”

The rage in Javert’s stare was more than enough to send a bolt of fear into Valjean, but he held his ground, picked up the book, and offered it to Javert. With trepidation and anger in his eyes, Javert regarded it. It was the same look he held when Valjean had freed Javert of the martingale at the barricade, dumbfounded and seething. 

All the same, he took the book with less force than Valjean expected and turned it around in his hands. He was delicate in the movement, as if fearing he might tear a page, or that the paper might suddenly burst into flames. Momentarily, he felt a surge of pity for Javert, seeing a man suddenly released from Toulon, utterly lost in the wake of care from another human being. 

“Should you wish to join me,” Valjean said evenly, “I shall be in the library.”

* * *

Several days passed in silence until Javert finally made his way sheepishly into the library. He hesitated at the doorway to the reading room, studying Valjean intently, mute in his consternation. A book was tucked neatly under his arm, and he held tightly onto it with strained knuckles. Valjean waited patiently, only looking slightly up from the book in his own hands, until Javert walked and sat in the other armchair without a word. In a frustrated motion, he crossed his long legs and opened the book. 

When he appeared settled, Valjean attempted to turn his attentions back to his reading. However, the words would not stick to his mind, and he found himself instead stealing extended glances at Javert. His posture was upright, but tense, quite obviously uncomfortable. His fingers occasionally moved to turn the page, while his other had sat at his temple, working small circles into his skin. Javert’s face spoke to concentration. Yes, there was frustration upon his brow, but there was also an evident investment. Valjean had not thought it possible, but it seemed Javert was earnestly trying. 

“How are you finding him?” Valjean suddenly asked. 

Javert startled in his seat and paused, smoothing out his hair and shifting in the chair, seemingly realizing all at once that Valjean was watching him. He cleared his throat roughly. 

“I find myself in both agreement and disagreement on several issues.”

“Such as?”

Sighing, Javert marked his place and closed the book. 

“Tell me, how is one to derive morals from seemingly nothing? Should one not look to a higher power for such ideals?”

“Kant’s Good Will?”

“Surely men cannot be trusted to know such things innately.”

Valjean leaned back in his seat, considering the thought. “Every man knows what he would for himself, though. I suppose the idea is to, in effect, do unto others as you would do unto yourself. Rather than a moral imperative, Kant argues it a logical one. It makes no sense to do evil.”

Javert leaned forward. “And why do men do evil then?”

“Men go against logic all the time,” Valjean said. “And furthermore against their own self-interest.”

“For instance?” Javert prodded. It was clear what he was asking, but Valjean did not see it as a jeer at his expense. Javert was genuinely attempting to understand him; there was something so uncharacteristically sincere in his face. The idea was so unthinkable, so unprecedented that it took a moment for Valjean to find the words. He swallowed.

“For instance,” Valjean finally said, “a man might steal bread to feed his starving family. In Kant’s view, the theft is immoral because, of course, the man would never wish it upon himself. To perform an immoral act is to condone it for all of society. To Kant, that is.”

“What would he have him do then?”

“With Kant, all would depend on the man’s intent. Morality is relative to each man’s rational sense of what is right and wrong.”

“Hence the motivation is the self, rather than God? Or law?”

“Correct. Good action based on anything else would be irrational to Kant.”

By this time, Javert was leaning so far forward his elbows rested on his knees, scrutinizing Valjean with the edge of a tool of the government. His posture spoke to a different story, almost resembling a man in prayer, yet his face remained upright. He looked at Valjean as if he were a book; Javert turned his pages over, pouring over each sentence in an attempt to understand its meaning. 

“Do you think what you did was right?”

Valjean stared at him. “By Kant’s standards?” he managed.

“If only you agree with him.”

Hesitation tinted Valjean’s voice. “...Not entirely. The flaw of Kant’s perspective is his idealism. He assumes that humans have free will. If good actions are only such without any motivation of reward or punishment, can his Good Will really exist? Could anything I did in my youth be good or bad considering I did everything for the sake of money or of avoiding the reprimand of the law? At the very least, I—well.” He sighed, looking miserably into his lap, stopping the frustration that had crept so stealthily into his tone and settling back into neutrality. “It is difficult to apply his reason to the conditions under which we live in society.” 

“Seems a convenient excuse,” Javert said. “To blame society for the failings of an individual.”

There was no bite to Javert’s response, but Valjean still felt it cut through him like the quick knick of paper on skin. Not meant to cut deep, but the sting was jarring all the same. 

“It was not my intent to argue such,” Valjean replied. “I simply mean to explain Kant’s view.”

“Which you find disagreeable.”

“Partly.”

“And is there a particular philosopher whose views you subscribe to?” Javert asked, irritation growing. 

“There is no one philosopher who has the answers to everything, Javert. Simply read and take from them what you will.”

A look resembling agony passed over Javert’s face and settled into dissatisfaction as he leaned back into the chair with his arms crossed. Valjean sighed at the sight of Javert pouting like a child. Babysitting, indeed.

“Well, you quite obviously find fault Kant, but is there anything you found enlightening?” Valjean said. 

“Yes,” Javert said, his lips curling into a terrible, mocking grin. “His thoughts on falsehood are quite interesting.”

“Hardly interesting if you already agree,” Valjean murmured. He knew well Kant’s staunch rejection of lying as an act of self-sabotage, an infringement on the freedoms of others. More frankly put, he insisted there was never a situation in which lying was a moral act. 

“One needs only honesty and hard work to live a righteous life,” Javert said, seemingly satisfied with himself. This, in contrast to before, seemed more pointed; Valjean could feel Javert bristling almost automatically at any challenge to his beliefs. So, Valjean felt most justified in his even more targeted jab. 

“Was it moral to lie to me that night?”

Any trace of mirth on Javert’s face disappeared in a moment. He stared, face becoming ever paler, as if turning as white and unmoving as a marble statue. 

“You claim it was the right thi—”

“I know what I said,” Javert snapped. 

“Then if you agree with his stance on lying, was your lie not in your own self-interest? Does that not dilute the importance of truth? Was it not taking my dignity away to claim my right to a rational response? If you had stayed...” Valjean trailed off, slowly realizing the weight of his words as they came out, unbidden.

“I would have most certainly arrested you,” Javert finished for him icily, but something dubious sat behind the answer, unsaid. So deeply was it buried, Valjean surmised, that Javert knew nothing of it himself.

Silence hung between them. The total quiet of the library was oppressive at that time, and Valjean thought he could have suffocated in it. The room was too small, the space separating them too tight, Javert’s eyes on him too harsh. 

Was it indeed lying to keep on like this? Valjean knew for certain that Javert had committed an egregious sin against himself and destroyed his soul, cornered by indecision. Still, it baffled him, the idea that the wolf might first kill itself before giving into the temptation of eating a lamb, the most natural thing in the world. Yet Javert had no idea. Could he truly justify keeping that truth from Javert when it clearly caused him so much pain? Would it cause him more pain to know what he had done? Valjean’s stomach dropped at the sight of Javert then, hopelessly precarious as he looked at him. 

Valjean was torn. Desperately, he wanted to know  _ why _ Javert had done this, but asking so boldly would deliver upon Javert a torrent of unpleasant memories and inconvenient truths to acknowledge. More uncomfortably, Valjean knew the truth of why he wanted to know so badly: absolve himself. 

“Was that the only option?” Valjean asked quietly. 

Javert was grimacing, the lines in his face etched even more deeply as a hand went to his head. For a long while he sat there, unmoving and hunched over, gripping his book with alarming force. 

“Are you well, Jav-”

“Excuse me, I must retire,” Javert said, suddenly snapping up to his feet, if unsteadily. “All this reading has made me weary, and my head aches.” He strode out of the room without hesitation, leaving Valjean alone again.  It was minutes later when the earthquake began. Unlike its predecessors, it lasted longer, its shakes more violent, its intent more destructive with each tremor that moved through Valjean like a lightning strike. Stacks of books fell over, the bookshelves nearly toppled, and Valjean could  _ hear  _ its power emanating from the ground. After several minutes, Valjean released his iron hold on the arms of his chair and stood shakily, trying to suppress the sickness in his stomach. Even without leaving the mansion, instinctively, he knew something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't been writing whatsoever lately, this is from my backlog. I've been busy working on and formatting for the [Hands Clasped Tight zine](https://handsclaspedtight.bigcartel.com/) (please check it out if you haven't yet!) as well as fun times job searching in a pandemic. Hope y'all are doing well 💕


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